How we chose, what each option actually costs, and how our children have settled in.
This is the question we were asked most before we moved, and the one we agonised over longest.
Spanish public school
- Free, apart from books, trips and the comedor
- Full immersion — the fastest route to real fluency
- Your children make local friends and you meet local families
- Harder for older children arriving with no Spanish
International school
- Fees are significant and rise each school year
- English-language curriculum, easier if you may return to the UK
- A ready-made community of families in the same position
- Spanish is taught as a subject, so fluency comes much more slowly
What we chose and why
We started both children at an international school. Straight out of the UK system, with a house move, a new country and new everything, we wanted one thing in their week that still made sense — an English curriculum and teachers who understood the system they had come from.
Leo is staying there. He has additional needs, and continuity matters to him more than speed of language learning. The English curriculum, the familiar structure and the support he already has in place are worth more to our family than an immersion timetable would be.
Luna moves to a Spanish public school in September. She is young enough for immersion to be realistic, and it is genuinely the only way we have seen children come out properly bilingual. It is not risk-free and we know it may be a hard first term.
So we have ended up with one child in each system, which was never the plan and is turning out to be the honest answer for us. If you are deciding: age at arrival and your child's individual needs matter far more than the general arguments for either option.
